Anaxandridas II

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Anaxandridas II (Greek: Ἀναξανδρίδας) was a king of Sparta, son of Leon, between 560 to 525 BC. At the time when Croesus sent his embassy to form alliance with " the mightiest of the Greeks," i. e. about 554, the war with Tegea, which in the late reigns went against them, had now been decided in the Spartans' favour, under Anaxandrides and Ariston. Under them, too, was mainly carried on the suppression of the tyrannies, and with it the establishment of the Spartan hegemony. Having a barren wife whom he would not divorce, the ephors, we are told, made him take with her a second. By her he had Cleomenes I; and after this, by his first wife Dorieus (father of Euryanas), Leonidas, and Cleombrotus. (Herod, i. 65-69, v. 39-41; Paus. iii. 3.) Several sayings are ascribed to him in Plutarch. Apophth. Lac. (where the old reading is Alexandridas instead of Anaxandrides). With the reign of Anaxandrides and Ariston commences the period of certain dates, the chronology of their predecessors "being doubtful and the accounts in many ways suspicious; the only certain point being the coincidence of historians Polydorus and Theopompus with the first Messenian War, which itself cannot be fixed with certainty and it seemes related to the earlier Anaxandridas I, who was son of Theopompus, the 9th Eurypontid king of Sparta; himself never reigned, but by the accession of Leotychides became from the seventh generation the father of the kings of Sparta of that branch.